Two double murder trials to open in Kane County

Unrelated homicide cases from Aurora force jury pool to be expanded for Monday

January 27, 2013|By Clifford Ward, Special to the Tribune

(Tribune illustration)

The trials of two men accused of double homicides are scheduled to begin Monday in adjacent Kane County courtrooms, a rare coincidence that has required officials to beef up the jury pool.

Michael J. Reyes is charged in the older of the two cases, the 1993 killings of two brothers from Montgomery found shot to death in their family's van in Aurora.

In the second case, Jaime Diaz is scheduled to stand trial in the 1998 killings of Brendon Anderson and Elias Calcano, whose burned bodies were discovered in an Aurora alley.

"It's a little unusual to have two murder trials starting on the same days, much less to have two double murder trials," Courts Administrator Doug Naughton said Friday.

Court system personnel will make a few adjustments in the normal routine at the courthouse in St. Charles, most notably increasing the number of potential jurors, he said. Normally, 150 potential jurors would be on hand; Naughton said the county is trying to increase the pool by 25to 40.

In both cases, arrests were made a decade or more after the crimes. Diaz, 35, was serving a prison sentence on a drug conviction when he was charged with the slayings in 2008, a development made possible partly through advances in DNA testing technology.

Authorities say Diaz shot Anderson, 21, of North Aurora, and Calcano, 21, of Aurora, while all three were seated in Anderson's Cadillac Fleetwood. The car was parked near an Aurora alley off New York Street.

The bodies were placed on the ground near the car. Anderson's body was set on fire and Calcano, who was also beaten about the head, had been sprayed with an accelerant, police said.

In a recent court hearing, prosecutors disclosed that a DNA test not available in the late 1990s linked Diaz to a beer bottle recovered from the back seat of Anderson's car.

Court files indicate that prosecutors also plan to call a witness, a man who said he and Diaz were in the same street gang. The man claims he saw the shootings, the files say.

Authorities never have disclosed a motive for the slayings, and Assistant State's Atty. Greg Sams declined to comment, as did Greg Brown, the public defender representing Diaz.

Anderson's parents mounted a campaign in the late 1990s to keep attention focused on the unsolved crime and raise reward money.

"We'll go to our graves still missing our son," Rob Anderson told the Tribune in 1999, on the anniversary of the killing. "We'll never have a normal life again. We don't want this to happen to someone else."

The Andersons were in court Thursday for the final pretrial hearing and then met with prosecutors. They declined to comment afterward.

The other trial focuses on the deaths of Franciso Montoya, 18, and his brother, Jesus, 19.

Their bodies were found March 9, 1993, in the family's cargo van in the near east side Aurora neighborhood where the Montoya family had lived before relocating to Montgomery. They had been shot execution style, police said.

In 2007, more than 30 reputed street gang members, including Reyes, were indicted in almost two dozen unresolved gang killings in Aurora, including those of the Montoya brothers. A second man was initially charged, but the charges against him were dropped in 2008.

Reyes is accused of murdering the brothers in what authorities say was a suspected drug rip-off.

Both trials are expected to take about a week.

If found guilty, Reyes and Diaz would each automatically face a sentence of natural life in prison.